MIDTJ-BUSTERS

By identifying a lack of horniness as one of the reasons for Manchester United’s limp displays this season, Louis van Gaal confirmed at least one thing to The Fiver: we’ll miss him when he’s gone. Sadly, the man known to anagram lovers as A Vaginal Soul will be gone quite soon, if we are to believe the latest reports in Portuguese organ Diário de Noticias, which claims that the former Chelsea manager known to anagram lovers as That Toxic Prta has agreed a three-year deal to replace his old friend at Old Trafford this summer. If that is true, then Thursday night’s Big Vase joust between United and Midtjylland is not about saving Van Gaal’s job. But it is about saving face … and possibly even United’s season.

United endured one of the most humiliating European defeats in their history when they lost 2-1 to the Danish nanobes last week but Monday’s resounding FA Cup victory over no less a force than Shrewsbury Town has convinced them that they will come roaring back and crush the pesky Scandinavians at Old Trafford. What’s more, United are now wise to Midtjylland’s set-piece ploys – as they showed by nicking one of them to beat Shrewsbury – and Juan Mata has been working all week with a sports psychologist and a really hard paper bag to improve his tackling. Mind you, Midtjylland hinted on Thursday morning that they have more tricks in store for their hosts. “Louis van Gaal was inspired by us to do @ManUtd free-kick,” read a giddy tweet on the club’s social media disgrace thingamajig. “Let’s give him some more inspiration tonight!”

Lady Luck has not smiled much at United this season – whether that has anything to do with their levels of concupiscence is unclear – so it’s no surprise that they will go into this crucial date with 13 first-team players incapacitated. The home defence will be especially threadbare as Chris Smalling and Cameron Borthwick-Jackson have been ruled out, meaning United’s backline could consist of the least intimidating quartet sent into European action from these shores since Bucks Fizz.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“My head was finished, I was gone. I was suicidal at times, in a bad place for a long time. I couldn’t take it and was thinking about calling it a day” – Sonny Pike on life as a football prodigy. He tells Nick Ames what happened next.

Photograph: Action Images

FIVER LETTERS

“When Mr Martin said ‘And a parsec is definitely about one arcsecond’, I’m sure he didn’t mean that (unless done purposely to generate yet more pedantic letters). I think what he meant to say was that: ‘A parsec is the distance from the Sun to an astronomical object that has a parallax angle of one arcsecond.’ He could say that a parsec is 648,000/π astronomical units, or approximately 3.085677581×1016 metres. But I doubt what I said is an absolutely correct statement, so the pedantry will probably not end as a result. Yours recursively” – Jefferson Powell.

“What Peter fails to consider in his hope of closing the parsec topic down for good is that in an infinite multiverse the topic has been and will continue to be discussed ad infinitum. Of course, this theory also means that somewhere out there is a Fiver that is occasionally funny” – Lee Gardner.

“Peter’s letter was one of the longest pieces I’ve ever seen in The Fiver. Instead of reading the whole thing, I skimmed it, trying to gather the gist. I saw the words ‘sphincter’ and ‘rubber’, laughed out loud, and kept going to the next section. Well done, Peter. I have no idea what you were going on about but you made me laugh” – Señor Bingo (and others).

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FOOTBALL WEEKLY EXTRA

AC Jimbo and his pod squad up in here. Or something like that. At least they will be in a bit.

BITS AND BOBS

Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain could be done for the season and Euro 2016 with Arsenal sending him for scans on what could be serious knee-gah!

Photograph: Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images

Meanwhile, former Arsenal and France Musketeer Bobby Pires, 79, has retired from football. “Some time [we] must stop,” he yawned. “We must say stop and above all must give way to [the] young.”

Manuel Pellegrini is busy scoring some points after Manchester City’s prolonged winter break proved more rewarding than Dynamo Kyiv’s in a 3-1 Big Cup win. “I think it’s important to take the right decision and think about a lot of things, about why you take this decision,” he babbled in regards to sending the U-6s out for that drubbing at Chelsea last weekend. “It was a key decision to rest the team that day. Unfortunately we could not continue in the FA Cup.”

Good eggs Anderlecht have urged Uefa suits not to disqualify Dinamo Zagreb’s youth team for fielding an ineligible substitute in the final seven minutes of their Little Cup match. “They beat us fairly on the pitch, and we don’t want to benefit from an appeal, especially as the suspended player had no influence on the outcome,” said Anderlecht’s youth director Jean Kindermans.

Former Aston Villa chairman Doug Ellis hasn’t got much hope for their survival this season. “For me, I’m heartbroken,” he parped. “It is now a certainty that they will be in the Championship next year.”

Notts County chairman Ray Trew is selling up. “When my family are subjected to the kind of foul, mindless abuse that they have been in recent days, both in person and courtesy of the oh-so brave keyboard warriors, regardless of whether this is just the minority ruining it for the larger supporter base, I have to make changes,” he fumed.

And Gennaro Scarlato claims a Lega Pro club in Italy refused to hire him as their new manager unless he coughed up a fee first. “I thought they were just rumours, but now I know that situations like this are real,” sighed the former Napoli defender. “Becoming a football coach is hard work.”

STILL WANT MORE?

Manchester United and the problem of moving on from an all-powerful leader. By Jonathan Wilson.